Retail stores often provide wheeled shopping carts to their customers for use while shopping. Customers will often use carts to carry their purchases from the retail store to their car in a parking lot or garage when they are finished shopping. However, customers often do not return carts to designated locations. Abandoned carts that occupy parking spaces or walkways can cause safety hazards or frustration for customers. Furthermore, a parking lot littered with abandoned carts can give an impression of clutter and neglect that may be damaging to the business. Retailers typically combat this problem by assigning employees the task of collecting carts and returning them to a proper location, which carries significant costs in terms of time and labor.
Some attempts have been made to use technology to encourage customers to return carts to proper locations. In one approach, a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag reader located in a cart return area may be used to detect the presence in that area of a cart having an RFID tag, which requires specialized hardware in the cart return area as well as on the cart itself. However, significant technological problems remain.